Abstract oil painting of figures imprisoned behind a barred opening on a snow covered hill by Jerzy Bitter

Abstract oil painting of figures imprisoned behind a barred opening on a snow covered hill by Jerzy Bitter 

Abstract oil painting of figures imprisoned behind a barred opening on a snow covered hill by Jerzy Bitter 

overall: Height: 53.625 inches (136.208 cm) | Width: 63.500 inches (161.29 cm) pictorial area: Height: 49.500 inches (125.73 cm) | Width: 59.750 inches (151.765 cm) 

Artwork created by Jerzy Bitter in Israel in 1988, representing the plight of Jewish peasants trying to escape persecution during the Holocaust. The oil depicts tortured abstract figures imprisoned in a stark, dreamlike landscape. In 1941, when he was 6 months old, Jerzy and his parents left their hometown of Lvov for the Warsaw ghetto. They lived in the ghetto until the summer of 1942 when Jerzy and his mother escaped during a mass deportation. They lived in hiding and escaped Warsaw during a forced evacuation by the Germans in September 1944. They settled in Wieliczka, Poland. His father remained in the ghetto during the Warsaw ghetto uprising in spring 1943. After the uprising was put down by the Germans in May, he was deported to Majdanek concentration camp. Upon his liberation in 1944, he was reunited with his wife and son and they returned to Warsaw.